With almost every business utilizing social media these days, you have a lot of online competition. So staying ahead of the pack when it comes to marketing for optometrists is going to take a little effort on your end. There isn't much point of being on social media sites if your pages are unattractive. Would you want to follow your own social media? Or would you be unimpressed?

Social media is such a great avenue of communication between you and your customer base, so it's important that you're giving your followers what they are looking for. We've got a list of things that you might be doing that could make your social media unattractive to your customers.

Marketing for Optometrists: 8 Things That Could Make Your Social Media Unattractive

Having a Private Account

If you've set up a Twitter account for your practice it's important to make sure that your settings aren't set to private. If you have a private account, users will have to request, and you will have to approve, before they can see any of your content. The whole point of having these social media profiles is to open up communication between your business and your customers. Users might not waste their time following you if they have to request and then be approved to be your follower. And personally, I like to see what a business has to offer me before I commit to seeing their updates show up in my feed!

Updates That Are Too Long

One of the best things about social media is that you can absorb a lot of information in a quick amount of time. Most users are looking to skim through updates to find information that interests them. If you're posting updates (specifically on Facebook or LinkedIn, since Twitter has a character limit) that are going to take more than 20 seconds to read, you're probably going to lose your follower's attention. If you have a lot to say, make a blog post about it!

Negative Attitude

Something that can be very unattractive coming from a business on social media, is negativity. So make sure that you're overseeing whoever is in charge of your social media pages. You wouldn't want to find out that they are frustrated with going-ons in your practice and using social media as an avenue to vent. Remember, people want to do business with people they like, so make sure your social media is likable!

Too Many Hashtags

Hashtags can be a powerful tool for social media campaigns, but there is a right and wrong way to use them. We've all seen those tweets that hashtag every other word, or that have really long hashtags for an entire phrase. #Wedon'trecommenddoingthis. See how confusing that was?

Instead, think about what hashtags are trending or what might be most relevant to the information your customer base might be looking for on social media. If you're running a special campaign or event, create your own hashtag that hasn't been used for anything else, and ask others to use the hashtag as well!

Unscaled Images

Not every image on social media needs to be perfect. But, your profile pictures and cover images should be cleaned up and fit to scale to make your page look professional. If you're putting up large images that are pixelated, cut off, or stretched your page can look pretty sloppy. You don't have to be a graphic designer to create images to fit these dimensions. There are a lot of resources online that give you instructions and sizes for creating the perfect image. And a lot of these images can be created and edited in programs like PowerPoint!

Never Having Original Content

People will start to catch on if you're always only sharing the content of others on social media. It's important that you're coming up with your own content to share with your followers. This is going to help you show off your personality, and help build your credibility as a thought leader in the industry.

Not Using Images in Updates

Images on social media are almost guaranteed to be your most popular and engaging pieces of content to share. Even on Twitter, images now show up directly in your Twitter feed, so you no longer have to click on a link to see an image in a tweet. And, just think - when you scroll through Facebook what typically catches your eye more? Text updates or photos?

Not Asking Enough Questions

Part of the reason that people join social media sites is to feel like part of a community. To help keep your social media community engaged - ask questions. Figure out what type of information they are looking for, and bring up relevant conversations so that they can have meaningful interactions with you and their peers.

Want more helpful information on marketing for optometrists? Follow us on Facebook!